PepsiCo Pulls Stubborn Soda and Caleb’s Kola Because of Sugar Mixup

Last week PepsiCo removed Stubborn Soda and Caleb’s Kola products from the market after discovering recent batches were inadvertently made with beet sugar. The craft sodas are normally formulated with Fair Trade Certified cane sugar and the gaffe was the result of a supplier error, according to the company. The sugar mixup did not impact fountain-dispensed Stubborn Soda and Caleb’s Kola, which remain available.

“While this is not a food safety or product quality issue, we are voluntarily retrieving the product made with beet sugar and replacing it with product made with cane sugar. We apologize to our customers and consumers for any brief outage of product availability,” a PepsiCo spokesperson wrote in an email to BevNET.

The spokesperson, who noted that there is no discernible difference between the taste of beet and cane sugar, stated that a vast majority of PepsiCo’s retail customers will be receiving new product within the next two weeks.

PepsiCo made no public announcement about the interruption in availability of Stubborn Soda and Caleb’s Kola. However, the decision to pull Stubborn Soda from the market was mentioned online by Jason Talcott, the executive chef at Marriott Salt Lake University Park in Salt Lake City, who complained about the outage on Twitter. Meanwhile, a handful of Caleb’s Kola fans have groused about the soda being out of stock at local grocery stores as well as unavailable through Amazon.com and Walmart.com.